How to Catch a Duke, Grace Burrowes [short books to read .txt] 📗

a pattern around his knee, “how exhausting a wealthy life can be. The dancing alone takes stamina, and the gossiping and flirting and wagering.…The whole business struck me as a stage play put on for the amusement of the actors. A very expensive stage play.”

“And your Quaker heart railed against that display.” He stroked her hair. “As somebody who frequently went three days without eating in my childhood, I’m not too keen on fancy dress balls myself.”

“I thought you didn’t like the crowds and the dancing?”

“I loathe the whole farce. Do you have anything that bears Champlain’s handwriting?”

Abigail focused on the question, though she was physically and mentally exhausted and sadder than she could recall being in years.

“I don’t think so.”

“An old invoice from a gun purchase? A note bidding you to meet him beneath the trysting oak?”

“I destroyed my father’s business papers three years after closing his shop, and Champlain was inclined to do business in coin and show up unannounced.” Then he’d expected her to drop everything, sneak away to the stable, and hoist her skirts for him. There had been occasional trinkets—a plain ivory comb, a man’s pocket watch that kept unreliable time—nothing of great value.

Stephen’s caresses shifted to her face and neck. “I had thought to have a forger replicate the letters you’ve written out, but we need a sample of Champlain’s handwriting if the forgeries are to fool Stapleton.”

Of course Stephen would know competent forgers. “You will have to find some other woman to whom Champlain sent correspondence. Stephen, is something wrong?” The quality of his touch, while gentle, was distracted. The cadence of his speech less than loverly.

“I told Quinn that I killed my father.”

Oh, dear competed with And Quinn had better have taken the news well. “And?”

“Quinn said I did the right thing. He apologized. Said I should never have been put in the position I was in.”

Abigail sat up and laid an arm across Stephen’s shoulders. “Now you are annoyed, because life was so much easier when you had this wall of resentment between you and the duke. He disappointed you by being decent. Wretched of him.”

Stephen turned his face against her shoulder. “Have mercy, woman.” His tone suggested a hint of a smile. “I will have to ravish you simply to still your tongue.”

“I am indisposed.” She had informed him of that by note. He’d replied with a bouquet of scarlet salvia and blue hyacinths. The first connoted consolation and was often sent to sickrooms. The second, if Abigail recalled correctly, stood for a request for forgiveness—or for regret.

Stephen took her earlobe between his teeth. “You are indisposed. I am not put off by a little untidiness, Abigail.”

“You are trying to change the subject, because emotional untidiness drives you barmy. His Grace thwarted your precious fictions about his fragile pride and arrogant indifference, and now you have to like him as well as love him.”

Stephen left off sucking on her earlobe and shifted down to lay his head in her lap. “And I thought Jane was a tad too perceptive. When we marry, will you carry me over the threshold?”

“We will never marry.” Abigail stroked his hair, trying not to let the heartache of that reality ruin the moment. “I truly had no idea how extravagant a society ball is. It’s appalling.”

“You can view it that way—the elaborate food, the gowns worn only once, the casual wagers in the card room—or you can see the beauty in it. The dancing, the music, the sartorial splendor, and laughter—also the sums transferred from wealthy coffers into those of people who work for a living. The kitchen makes certain none of the food goes to waste either. You looked lovely, Abigail, and you are a woman who deserves to dress occasionally in something other than sackcloth and ashes.”

She could argue with him—nobody needed jeweled dancing slippers, for God’s sake—but she didn’t want to argue. She wanted to curl up in his arms and wake up in a world where nobody got in a lather about old letters, and a common inquiry agent could fall in love with a ducal heir.

“Abigail, dearest,” Stephen murmured, cheek pillowed on her thigh, “have you ever had a notion to put your mouth on a man’s—?”

She gave his hair a gentle yank. “Champlain kept journals.”

“Journals?”

“When he’d have to wait a few minutes for me to join him in the stable, or by the side of the stream, I’d come upon him jotting in a notebook. He said he transferred the notes he took in pencil into journals, because a man’s life should be of interest to his progeny.”

“Not a humble sort, was he?”

“The journals will provide an extensive sample of his handwriting.” Abigail traced a fingertip over Stephen’s lips. “Champlain wasn’t vain in the usual sense; he simply could not allow his mind to idle, so he busied himself with jottings in the odd moment.”

Stephen closed his teeth on her finger, sucked for a moment, then let go. “I did not instruct Neddy to look for journals. Stapleton will have them, though, and they weren’t in his safe, so they must be in his private sitting room. He’d be unlikely to keep such volumes in his library, or where Lady Champlain or a casual guest could come across them.”

Stephen sat up and wiggled out of his knee breeches, extracted a handkerchief from a pocket, and tossed these items onto the clothespress. “A good forger needs some time to work, but we don’t have to copy the entire body of letters. Just enough to draw Stapleton out. You might have to sit in the park reading them, and then we’ll catch him trying to accost you.”

“You are aroused.”

He looked down at himself. “Around you, darling Abigail, this is my usual condition. One need hardly remark it and I assure you, I am capable of easing my own needs.”

He was so casual about such an intimate, complicated undertaking. Or perhaps not casual—competent.

“We need to talk about the letters,” Abigail said, though she